The United States, home to five percent of the worlds' population, now houses twenty-five percent of the world's prison inmates. Our incarceration rate--at 714 per 100,000 residents and rising--is almost forty percent greater than our nearest competitors (the Bahamas, Belarus, and Russia). More pointedly, it is 6.2 times the Canadian rate and 12.3 times the rate in Japan. Economist Glenn Loury argues that this extraordinary mass incarceration is not a response to rising crime rates or a proud success of social policy. Instead, it is the product of a generation-old collective decision to become a more punitive society. He connects this policy to our history of racial oppression, showing that the punitive turn in American politics and culture emerged in the post-civil rights years and has today become the main vehicle for the reproduction of racial hierarchies. Whatever the explanation, Loury agues, the uncontroversial fact is that changes in our criminal justice system since the 1970s have created a nether class of Americans--vastly disproportionately black and brown--with severely restricted rights and life chances. Moreover, conservatives and liberals agree that the growth in our prison population has long passed the point of diminishing returns. Stigmatizing and confining of a large segment of our population should be unacceptable to Americans. Loury's call to action makes all of us now responsible for ensuring that the policy changes.
Race, Incarceration, and American Values
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In this pithy discussion, renowned scholars debate the American penal system through the lens—and as a legacy—of an ugly and violent racial past. Economist Loury argues that incarceration rises even as crime rates fall because we have become increasingly punitive. According to Loury, the disproportionately black and brown prison populations are the victims of civil rights opponents who successfully moved the country's race dialogue to a seemingly race-neutral concern over crime. Loury's claims are well-supported with genuinely shocking statistics, and his argument is compelling that even if the racial argument about causes is inconclusive, the racial consequences are clear. Three shorter essays respond: Stanford law professor Karlan examines prisoners as an inert ballast in redistricting and voting practices; French sociologist Wacquant argues that the focus on race has ignored the fact that inmates are first and foremost poor people; and Harvard philosophy professor Shelby urges citizens to break with Washington's political outlook on race. The group's respectful sparring results in an insightful look at the conflicting theories of race and incarceration, and the slim volume keeps up the pace of the argument without being overwhelming. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
With 5 percent of the world’s population, the U.S. accounts for 25 percent of those who are imprisoned. What does that say about American values? asks economist Loury. Those statistics suggest that the U.S. is a punitive society targeting its punishment disproportionately more often at the poor and racial minorities, stigmatizing huge segments of the population, he asserts. Starting with that premise, Loury invited commentary at a forum on race and incarceration from three scholars: Pamela Karlan, Tommie Shelby, and Loic Wacquant. The result is a slim book that is, nonetheless, a penetrating look at the troubling trends in incarceration in the U.S. and the broader impact on American society. Karlan highlights voter disenfranchisement of blacks and offers a historic perspective since Reconstruction. Shelby explores the complexities of individual choice and social structure and the responsibility of society to explain the consequences of individual actions to the poor people most likely to be incarcerated. And Wacquant emphasizes economic class as a greater indicator than race of who is likely to be incarcerated. --Vernon Ford
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Loury's Race, Incarceration, and American Values from Boston Review Books
September 24, 2008
By L. Coleman
Format:Hardcover
In this short book, Loury engages in a provocative study of the link between race and incarceration. Citing a number of shocking statistics, the author points out that the number of incarcerations has dramatically increased over the past thirty years or so. This spike in imprisonments seems to have little to do with actual crime rates, and more to do with a prevalence of sentencing members of poor, African American communities. While the racial disparity in imprisonment rates suggests obvious grievances on the part of the American judicial system, Loury argues that the problem has roots in what he calls a lack of "social responsibility": the balance between an individual's obligation to uphold the law, and society's commitment to ensuring fair opportunities and reform for those imprisoned.
I found Loury's suggestions on reforming the injustices of the penal system to be very insightful, calling for a change in social consciousness and ethics in order to improve and defend the rights of those convicted of crimes. Loury points out that black men who are incarcerated experience a 10 percent drop in hourly wages after they are released from prison, and many are unable to retain voting rights long after they fulfill their sentences for even more minor offences. While they are incarcerated, their families and communities suffer, evidenced in part by studies that show urban communities with high incarceration rates in a given year experienced higher crime rates the following year.
Loury's piece is followed by three shorter pieces by Karlan, Wacquant, and Shelby--all renowned researchers and professors--who offer additional commentary and information specific to their fields. Their essays supplement Loury's discussion in a productive and illuminating manner.
This is an important book for anyone who cares remotely about the integrity and efficacy of the American judicial system.
I found Loury's suggestions on reforming the injustices of the penal system to be very insightful, calling for a change in social consciousness and ethics in order to improve and defend the rights of those convicted of crimes. Loury points out that black men who are incarcerated experience a 10 percent drop in hourly wages after they are released from prison, and many are unable to retain voting rights long after they fulfill their sentences for even more minor offences. While they are incarcerated, their families and communities suffer, evidenced in part by studies that show urban communities with high incarceration rates in a given year experienced higher crime rates the following year.
Loury's piece is followed by three shorter pieces by Karlan, Wacquant, and Shelby--all renowned researchers and professors--who offer additional commentary and information specific to their fields. Their essays supplement Loury's discussion in a productive and illuminating manner.
This is an important book for anyone who cares remotely about the integrity and efficacy of the American judicial system.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
In this short essay, as part of the Tanner Lecture series, at Stanford University, Professor Glenn C. Loury, (holder of the Merton P. Stoltz endowed Chair of Social Science at Brown University), reminds me of a poem by the renown revolutionary poet Don L. Lee called "Don't Cry, Scream!" The last line of the poem says something to the effect that we will "envy the BLIND man -- (because we) know that he will hear what (we'll) never see."
And that is exactly what professor Loury has elected to do here. He takes clear flight from his own deep passion and from the denial that is the screen of blindness shielding American culture from its own internal truths about how through a half century of racism it has distorted its own cherished values. Loury uses the ethics of Jon Rawls to make a controlled intellectual scream that pierces a dagger through the heart of America's racist membrane of denial about what the criminal justice system is doing to American culture and American values. First what it is doing to America's number one perceived internal enemy and existential anti-hero, black men. And then what it is doing to the black race more generally through destruction of the black family by criminalizing all of its black men. And finally, in what it is doing to diminish America's most cherished values and American humanity as a whole, by turning a blind eye to a morally reprehensible and thoroughly racist criminal justice system. [Whites should beware because their chickens always come home to roost: History has taught us that what is done to black people today, soon will be done to other minorities and poor white people just around the corner, tomorrow.] To black men, America is already a veritable police state.
Loury cites statistical chapter and verse to back up this claim, including the latest academic research, so that even with Barack Obama as its President, he leaves no stones unturned and no place for a contented "pretend non-racist" American public to hide. Never has there been a clearer or more devastating critique of the way the American criminal justice system has distorted and diminished American ideals, principles and values of justice, than this one.
Without intending to, Professor Loury in this single essay, has become the moral voice in our collective heads that tell us what we already know: That America's "welfare and crime mantra" has long been the subtext of an ideological "frontlash" that has helped solidify the conservative elements in the American body politic and that been responsible for stamping on the forehead of every black male, the label "criminal predator" as the preferred identity for black men within America's racist culture: In the racist (and mostly conservative) mind, black men are all "potential super predators" that require revenge and punishment at an early age (and thus before the fact as a preventive measure) -- that is, if the racist social order is to be maintained in a steady state. It is this socially and culturally constructed "criminal identity" that has been foisted upon us black men since the end of slavery. It is this identity that is responsible for maintaining in the minds of a racist run culture: that the racist hierarchy must remain a sacrosanct part of the American social order. Thus the continued criminalization of Black men has become an existential imperative in the dying drama of White supremacy.
Professor Loury tells us that thorough the backdoor of the criminal justice system, heavy-handed police tactics, and draconian drug laws, the whole black race has been criminalized, by turning inner city black men into a racially defined pariah class. In short, since the end of slavery and the Southern Redemption, America had already met its existential enemy and it was, and remains, the black man.
Said differently, Professor Loury's essay underscores that American culture can maintain its existential myth of white superiority only by making a symbolic sacrifice of the black race through the criminalization of the black male identity. As Loury notes, once a black man becomes a felon, it is equivalent to a social and civic death, and then the black man ceases to exist as a factor in American social life. It is through this drama (America's own Kabuki dance) of the sacrifice and social death of the black man, that continues to prop up the myth of white supremacy.
Through the sacrifice of black men via an insanely unjust criminal justice system, America has "created criminogenic conditions in our sprawling urban ghettos," and these conditions have become the fuel that runs an "out of control" criminal industry called the "prison-industrial complex." According to Professor Loury, this new industry of social (and often physical) death (which has 2.5 million and still counting), employs more people than General motors, Ford and Wal-Mart combined, three of the largest industries in the U.S.
Where are the other black public intellectuals including my own hero, Cornell West, when we need them? I'll tell you where: They are all with Tavis Smiley and Bill Cosby genuflecting in front of their corporate sponsors, the anemic Black Christian Church, making empty noises about love and salvation and about how great their black mothers and black women are, all while the racist criminal justice system is taking all of us black men down to the cultural killing floor for social slaughter. 100 stars!
And that is exactly what professor Loury has elected to do here. He takes clear flight from his own deep passion and from the denial that is the screen of blindness shielding American culture from its own internal truths about how through a half century of racism it has distorted its own cherished values. Loury uses the ethics of Jon Rawls to make a controlled intellectual scream that pierces a dagger through the heart of America's racist membrane of denial about what the criminal justice system is doing to American culture and American values. First what it is doing to America's number one perceived internal enemy and existential anti-hero, black men. And then what it is doing to the black race more generally through destruction of the black family by criminalizing all of its black men. And finally, in what it is doing to diminish America's most cherished values and American humanity as a whole, by turning a blind eye to a morally reprehensible and thoroughly racist criminal justice system. [Whites should beware because their chickens always come home to roost: History has taught us that what is done to black people today, soon will be done to other minorities and poor white people just around the corner, tomorrow.] To black men, America is already a veritable police state.
Loury cites statistical chapter and verse to back up this claim, including the latest academic research, so that even with Barack Obama as its President, he leaves no stones unturned and no place for a contented "pretend non-racist" American public to hide. Never has there been a clearer or more devastating critique of the way the American criminal justice system has distorted and diminished American ideals, principles and values of justice, than this one.
Without intending to, Professor Loury in this single essay, has become the moral voice in our collective heads that tell us what we already know: That America's "welfare and crime mantra" has long been the subtext of an ideological "frontlash" that has helped solidify the conservative elements in the American body politic and that been responsible for stamping on the forehead of every black male, the label "criminal predator" as the preferred identity for black men within America's racist culture: In the racist (and mostly conservative) mind, black men are all "potential super predators" that require revenge and punishment at an early age (and thus before the fact as a preventive measure) -- that is, if the racist social order is to be maintained in a steady state. It is this socially and culturally constructed "criminal identity" that has been foisted upon us black men since the end of slavery. It is this identity that is responsible for maintaining in the minds of a racist run culture: that the racist hierarchy must remain a sacrosanct part of the American social order. Thus the continued criminalization of Black men has become an existential imperative in the dying drama of White supremacy.
Professor Loury tells us that thorough the backdoor of the criminal justice system, heavy-handed police tactics, and draconian drug laws, the whole black race has been criminalized, by turning inner city black men into a racially defined pariah class. In short, since the end of slavery and the Southern Redemption, America had already met its existential enemy and it was, and remains, the black man.
Said differently, Professor Loury's essay underscores that American culture can maintain its existential myth of white superiority only by making a symbolic sacrifice of the black race through the criminalization of the black male identity. As Loury notes, once a black man becomes a felon, it is equivalent to a social and civic death, and then the black man ceases to exist as a factor in American social life. It is through this drama (America's own Kabuki dance) of the sacrifice and social death of the black man, that continues to prop up the myth of white supremacy.
Through the sacrifice of black men via an insanely unjust criminal justice system, America has "created criminogenic conditions in our sprawling urban ghettos," and these conditions have become the fuel that runs an "out of control" criminal industry called the "prison-industrial complex." According to Professor Loury, this new industry of social (and often physical) death (which has 2.5 million and still counting), employs more people than General motors, Ford and Wal-Mart combined, three of the largest industries in the U.S.
Where are the other black public intellectuals including my own hero, Cornell West, when we need them? I'll tell you where: They are all with Tavis Smiley and Bill Cosby genuflecting in front of their corporate sponsors, the anemic Black Christian Church, making empty noises about love and salvation and about how great their black mothers and black women are, all while the racist criminal justice system is taking all of us black men down to the cultural killing floor for social slaughter. 100 stars!
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Lory's book on Race, Incarceration, and American Values is studded with stunning statistics about the seemingly racial discrimination that the black and the brown races undergo compared with to white counterparts. The book highlights many anomalies and biaseness in the American judicial system and Lory calls for a change in the social and ethical consciouness of the Americans as a possible solution. The state of American prisons and the rising number of prison rates puts to shame those of worst dictatorships.
Yet the book is a bit anachroniostic and American society of the new millennium has changed a lot from those of the previous eras. The election of am African-American to the highest post speaks volume of the resilience and ethical consciousness of the American society and the conditions depicted by Lory would further change during Obama's presidency.
The book is very useful and is a must read.
Gautam Maitra
Author of 'Tracing the Eagle's Orbit: Illuminating Insights into Major US Foreign Policies Since Independence.'
Yet the book is a bit anachroniostic and American society of the new millennium has changed a lot from those of the previous eras. The election of am African-American to the highest post speaks volume of the resilience and ethical consciousness of the American society and the conditions depicted by Lory would further change during Obama's presidency.
The book is very useful and is a must read.
Gautam Maitra
Author of 'Tracing the Eagle's Orbit: Illuminating Insights into Major US Foreign Policies Since Independence.'
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